Hello all. After using the Lakeland 'plastic toy' manual mincer for the second time in years, I decided I needed something a bit better for my second flirtation with home sausage making. I avoided the cheap stuff on ebay and amazon, thanks to the terrible reviews, and went with a 'classic no. 8' manual mincer from Weschenfelder, encouraged by the traditional design and established name.

Well, maybe I'm a bad workman blaming his tools, but I got some first-hand experience of those horror-story reviews - loose, misaligned parts; meat turned to mush; mush squeezing back up the feed, etc. Ironically the plastic toy worked a bit better for me. But am I just doing it wrong? Has anyone else used this with no problems?

I'm tempted to trust another name and try the Tre Spade stainless steel version, but for that price I could easily get a wee electric hobby mincer. Is that the better route? It'd save finding awkward places to clamp the thing down, at least.

After lurking about here for the past few days, I'm considering a dedicated stuffer too. Someone on ebay is selling 3 litre stuffers for a knockdown price. How does it look? Though I think I could stretch to this site's Pro stuffers, for the quick release and stainless steel nozzles. (After trying to force skins onto two different plastic nozzles, I won't try it a third time...)

Depending on your viewpoint it looks to be either a great deal, or too good to be true. The stuffer looks worth far more than the asking price. If it was a seller with more than 17 feedbacks (albeit 100%) I'd be really impressed. But, would I? Yes, i think I would. If you get ripped off it's only the equivalent of a night out at the pub.

PayPal doesn't seem to be an option. I just tried to purchase one, I thought it would be useful for smaller batches. Anyone else had this problem? I'm not keen to go via my bank account in case it's a scam, but with PayPal you know there will be a refund.

Have they got a secure payment option on their website. Than you can pay with your credit card and still get refunded if they don't supply or send you something not the same as the advertised item. If you can't pay with PayPal I sell something fishy but I could be wrong. Are they in the UK?

Thanks for the advice, all. I was a bit wary of the ebay stuffer - I agree with Wheels that it looked too good to be true - and left it too long to order. Maybe I was better off.

Anyway, other expenses coming up diverted me away from the pro stuffer too, towards a set of size 8 stainless steel nozzles for the manual mincer. I tried that again, with colder, thinner-cut meat, and things turned out a little better. (It was a case of the bad workman) I think it'll just take some tinkering to find the subtleties.